🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

🖐️ Fine Motor Skills — Manipulating small objects, tools, and materials during hands-on activities builds the hand strength and finger dexterity children need for writing and self-care.

🌈 Sensory Exploration — Safe exploration of varied textures, temperatures, and materials helps children build a rich sensory map of the world and supports self-regulation in children with sensory processing differences.

😌 Emotional Self-Regulation — Managing the feelings that arise during activities — frustration when something doesn't work, excitement, disappointment at the end — builds the self-regulation foundation that distinguishes emotionally ready kindergarteners.

🧠 Executive Function — Planning an activity, following multi-step directions, and seeing a project through to completion builds the executive function skills — working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control — that are the strongest predictors of school success.

This easy-to-make Valentine's Day place mat will allow you and your preschooler to cherish the memories of such a special day.

What You Need

Red, pink or white construction paper

Red, pink or white heart doilies

A current picture of your preschooler

Glue

Markers

Contact paper

What To Do Step 1: Glue the picture of your preschooler to the middle of a heart doily. Glue the doily to the center of a piece of construction paper.

Step 2: Decorate the remainder of the place mat with other colored doilies.

Step 3: Have your preschooler print his/her name and the holiday on the paper.

Step 4: Laminate the piece of construction paper. Now it can be used as a place mat.

To Draw a Perfect Heart

If your preschooler is having trouble drawing a heart, offer him/her a heart-shaped cookie cutter. It is the perfect stencil!

Start a Family Tradition

Each member of the family can create one of these place mats or simply make one each Valentine's Day. Your preschooler will love to see how s/he changes and grows throughout the years.

More Valentine's Day Preschool Activities

Valentine's Day Hearts Hide-and-Seek Preschool Activity If you are planning to host a Valentine's Day party for your child, here is a preschool activity that is sure to be a lot of fun. It's a great game of hide-and-seek but instead of the children hiding, paper hearts are hidden ahead of time. The one who finds the most hidden hearts is the winner.

Ten Ways to Celebrate Valentine's Day with a Preschooler

Valentine's Day can be a fun and loving holiday -- not only at home, but in the classroom as well. This list of preschool activities will engage those youngsters and teach them a true meaning behind the Feb. 14 holiday.

Happy Valentine's Day Preschool Breakfast Let's celebrate Valentine's Day all day long starting with a great breakfast. Not only is this breakfast fun to eat, but your preschooler will have a fun time helping you make it for your entire family. A great way to show your family you love them.

I'm Mary Beth P. Adomaitis, the Preschool Activities writer for Preschoolrock.com. As a mom of a preschooler, I love hearing from other parents and teachers of preschoolers. If you have any preschool activity ideas, suggestions or questions, feel free to contact me. <img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/noscript?tag=preschoolacti-20" _fcksavedurl="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/noscript?tag=preschoolacti-20" alt="" />

Helpful Tips for Parents - Connect activities to real life: cooking math, laundry color sorting, grocery store counting. Embedded learning is the most transferable kind. - Outdoor activities should be a daily priority year-round. Research consistently links outdoor time to better attention, mood, and sleep in preschoolers. - Narrate what your child is doing during activities: "You're sorting the red blocks from the blue ones." This vocabulary exposure accelerates language development. - The clean-up is part of the activity. Involve children in restoring the space — it develops responsibility and makes future activities easier to launch. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How do I handle the mess from activities without discouraging my child? Establish a predictable cleanup routine rather than reacting to mess with visible frustration — your emotional response to mess teaches the child's relationship to mess. Contain messy activities to mess-appropriate spaces (outside, a table covered with a vinyl cloth, the bathtub). Make cleanup part of the activity, not a punishment for making it. Children who participate in cleanup develop responsibility; children who are sent away while adults clean up in frustration learn that making things is risky. ### How do I get my preschooler to try new activities? New activities need low-pressure introduction. Set the activity up invitingly and let the child approach at their own pace — forcing participation in new activities creates resistance. Joining the activity yourself (playing with the materials in their presence) is the most reliable way to ignite curiosity. A child who watches a parent enjoy something usually wants to try it. Related reading: See also our painting ideas and our chalk activities for more ideas on this topic.